A near-contemporary of another great Sufi poet, Jalaludin Rumi, Saadi of Shiraz was born in 1184 and studied under the great Sufi sage Jilani at the Nizamiya University in Baghdad before himself becoming one of the most noteworthy teachers of his age. His books, the Gulistan or Rose Garden and Bostan or Orchard, were written in his eighties, almost as afterthoughts to his work as a Sufi teacher, and both became instant classics of Persian literature, where their wit , depth, and almost misleading simplicity of writing have ensured their enduring popularity with the old and young to this day. The Rose Garden is a kaleidoscope of differing views and ideas, from the most noble to the most trivial, in what Peter Brent called "a rich mixture of aphorisms, proverbs, love lyrics, erotic stories, descriptions of great rulers and pronouncements in prose and verse on morality and ethics." Beyond the surface playfulness of his work, there is a deep consistency to Saadi's poetry which reveals its sufic dimension. Saadi lived in a time of violence and barbarity much like our own: witnessing the dismemberment of Persia by the Mongols with its attendant massacres, he saw the end of the cultural supremacy of his beloved Ba hdad. The charm, fun and games, and ultimate serenity in his work was thus hard-won, and aspects of life like cruelty and racism are not eluded: they are seen as part of the vast tapestry God has woven for mankind to study and learn from. It is in fact the complexity of Saadi's world-view that makes this book into a primer for self-development and an instrument for altering one's own consciousness.
Syed Omar Au-Shah's translation is the first time that Saadi's The Rose Garden or Gulistan has been shown to be a truly Sufi text, because prior translations have not understood the technical sufic terms nor appreciated Saadi's Sufi upbringing. Syed Omar Au-Shah's translation of the Rubaiyyat of Omar Khayaam likewise demonstrated the sufic content of the Rubaiyyat. Written in co-operation with Robert Graves, the Rubaiyyat translation caused great controversy, stimulated by the entrenched 'Fitz Omar' lobby who had made Khayaam their idol as a nihilistic materialist, and much worse. Other books by Omar All-Shah include: The Course of the Seeker, Sufism for Today. The Sufi Tradition in the West, The Rules or Secrets of the Naqshbandi Order and Sufism as Therapy.
